US library system, once the best in the world, faces death by a thousand cuts
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The underlying purpose of public libraries is to support an informed citizenry and society. They provide an opportunity to acquire knowledge to anyone who wants it, irrespective of their economic standing.
Removing them would have the effect of further reducing social mobility.
Even if we took steps to ensure that every person has a digital device, there will still be value in having a physical sanctuary dedicated to that purpose for people who need to share their living space.
Compared to a university, libraries lie on the extreme DIY side of the spectrum. It’s free, but they’re less labor-intensive.
If I were to rework the library system for the 21st century, I’d focus on making it more useful for people retraining because of AI altering supply/demand for careers.
The only constraint I’d put on it would be to keep it universally accessible. Charging and screening enrollment is for public colleges and universities that additionally provide a service to assist in acquiring knowledge.
Actually, I’ll go one step further and suggest that a hackerspace / makerspace like TechShop or Hacker Dojo could enrich the surrounding community in much the same way as a library does. They’re just focused around loaning access to modern tools and technology rather than books.
Libraries provide books, digital resources, maker spaces, guest speakers, clubs, and more to help students learn on their own.
Some of those resources can be used in the library, and some of them can be checked out on loan.
Please do not prevent others from learning or a librarian will correct you.
Source: I am a teacher this is what I hear from my students.
No, no. Looking for consensus at the moment is pointless, the dividers and wreckers will storm in and elongate the discussion until nothing occurs, which is their objective.
Just recreate the library system of the 80s and 90s without taking any input from anybody. Just do it from the top down.
Buildings full of books and a membership and tracking system. That'll do. No 'events' because someone will get upset about something. No censorship. No giving ground. Just books.
As Brewster Kahle notes in the article, current copyright law is unfavorable to libraries and makes it difficult (if not impossible) to build digital library collections legally. To preserve existing publishing models, we have also destroyed many of the intrinsic benefits of ebooks, such as unlimited readers and nearly free global distribution.
Copyright reform, such as a statutory first-sale doctrine and resale and lending rights for ebooks (and other digital media) might possibly help, though it could also provide a perverse incentive for publishers to adopt even more restrictive approaches, such as a service/subscription-only model.
Compulsory licensing (e.g. to public libraries) could perhaps be made a prerequisite for copyright protection. The Library of Congress could also be granted digital lending rights.
Seratonin addled brains have a hard time paying attention long enough to get through books.
The wealth technology has created is staggering, like Andreessen was ranting about earlier this week in that emotional essay. Any human on the planet (almost) can flip through any book or paper ever written (almost), instantly at any moment—from their couch, from the back of a horse on the Mongolian Steppe, anywhere. An invisible cathedral of books spans the globe, and we're always standing before its glowing altar. A planetary-scale library. This is a wonder of the modern world and we ought to be glorifying it, extolling the ingenuity of human technology and the greatness of its civilization.
And while the non-fiction/scientific-papers side of LibGen can seem impressive, the fiction side is meagre. Literature in languages other than a few of the world’s major languages is missing, and poetry is especially badly represented even for major languages.
In many places a real library offers some kind of inter-library loan service that can get you all those things that you won’t find – and perhaps will never find – on LibGen.
That's cynical. All it takes is a bit of political change, and a national government could make an initiative to scan everything in every public library in their borders, straight to LibGen. As a national prestige project. Like the US Library of Congress, or that import customs policy the Library of Alexandria had.
I think will happen one day. It's common-sense philanthropy for human civilization. We're just temporarily stuck in a dark age.
In any event, the prospect that in some enlightened future states are going to scan their library holdings, is little comfort for people in the present who rely on libraries to get all that wealth of knowledge unavailable in digital form.
1. Has a version without DRM
2. Has versioning if authors update or revise their books or editions
3. Is standardized instead of platform based
Then their counterargument is, well, if you have a DRM-free book, can't you just share it to the whole internet?
Yes, and you could scan a book with a phone, and even use OCR, and do the same thing. That isn't a DRM problem, that is a monetization problem. A problem that needs solving, but DRM isn't going to help you out, unless you want to get rid of physical books, which also would be a bad situation.
In fact, US copyright registration already requires submitting a copy to the Library of Congress either as a physical copy or in a standardized, DRM-free format (with the possible exception of encrypted PDFs, for which I assume the password would be required?) [1]
However, LoC could go even further by becoming a digital lending library, or a compulsory licensing regime could be enacted for public libraries in general.
I do not use my local library.
I download books or, very rarely, buy a paper book and scan it.
I am not sure what you mean by this. The poor use libraries all the time, and the wealthy can just buy a digital copy if the wait-list is too long.
Seems like libraries are _only_ for academics and record keepers now. Makes sense they’re facing issues
I used to think the internet democratized information, and then I learned about books. Article-readers don’t know what they miss out on; in its current form, the internet primarily serves to make people feel informed. I find that far more insidious than censorship.
Why wouldn’t they? Is the idea that a person can get any content a library might offer online (and for free, if willing to pirate it)? I can’t disagree with that, though if you’re not ok with pirating things then I think the value is enormous.
I think libraries are more than just the sum of the books, CDs, and DVDs on the shelves. In my experience they often have discounts to area activities (e.g., museums), offer classes and activities across the age spectrum (from story time for children to tech help geared toward the elderly or just the tech disinclined), and provide a nexus for community.
I think folks that haven’t been to a library in awhile would be pleasantly surprised with what they offer nowadays — though of course I only have personal experience with libraries across a few states in the northeast. It’s totally possible that I’m spoiled and don’t even know it.
Because their primary purpose was to provide open access to literature and information, which is now widely available thanks to the internet.
Citation needed. If you don't have money and aren't willing to pirate, what you can get on the internet is quite limited. There's Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg. A lot of the most reliable knowledge is still locked up in books, because the internet is disproportionately used for entertainment, advertising, etc
This is flatly untrue - and begs the question, have you ever actually used a library? Or a librarian?
Library science is information science. Librarians are the key to finding new information when you don’t know where to go. Professional librarians are incredible resources that are criminally underused and woefully under-appreciated. Libraries will even order books for you from other libraries, if they don’t have a local copy.
Yes, I've been to a library. When I go, the librarians tend to look up what's available on... the internet. So, prior to the widespread use of the internet, their ability to look up information was severely limited.
You're wondering if I've ever been to a library. I'm wondering if you understand what a monumental shift the internet was.
Because I've never encountered a librarian that just uses 'the internet' to find out what books are available on a subject, they have specific databases at their disposal which are updated versions of the card-file of old, and those databases are not generally accessible to the public
Even if you reduce a library to this primary purpose (and maintain that’s it purpose must be static for time immemorial), there are still people that don’t use the internet.
Some can’t. Some think they can’t. Some just won’t. Some don’t have affordable access. Some don’t have access at all.
Libraries still fulfill this information access purpose to a not-insignicant portion of the population in the US.
I think we’re in a bubble here where our idea of minimal computer / internet skills can greatly diverge from the reality of the broader community around us.
And that’s not even touching on the other reasons I listed in my original comment about why libraries still matter.
Your life experience may well be very different than mine.
My first memorable taste of freedom in a public space as a child was in a library; my parent left me in the kid section and I was so happy about that, exploring the space and the books.
I have not stopped feeling joy and wonder upon entering a library. So much potential! So much to explore! Public libraries allow me and my family to access so many more books than we can reasonably pay for, paid for collectively with tax money, which benefits so many people: job training, access to educational and entertainment media, access to a public restroom, access to a librarian who can help answer questions, and a generally calm and quiet space to simply exist.